


And What We Hear In silence

by InsomniaAndTea



Category: Problem Sleuth (Webcomic)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-22
Updated: 2013-06-22
Packaged: 2017-12-15 18:22:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/852615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsomniaAndTea/pseuds/InsomniaAndTea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An atmospheric piece about heat and a lack of sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And What We Hear In silence

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this, at least in part: http://shiftingpath.tumblr.com/post/53314659508/negativpotato-okay-small-headcanon-time-sleuth

Godhead fucking damnit.

You groan and roll over onto your side, trying to find a comfortable way to bury your head in your pillow without suffocating yourself. You just had to get the street side apartment, where the streetlight would shine in through your window all night long. You glare resentfully at the shadows on the wall, which are a very hardboiled perfect silhouette of the venetian blinds.

Amazing silhouettes and lighting are for the office, you repeat to yourself once again, flipping on to your stomach. Total pitch darkness is for bedrooms.

Besides, if the room is pitch black you can still be very hardboiled by lighting a cigarette in the darkness, keeping only your face dimly lit from below. If you had cigarettes right now, you would totally do that and ease your growing irritation.

You sigh and check your alarm clock. Too early for you to call this a bust and stay up all night, but too late for you to want to do anything other than sleep.

The couple that just moved in above you don’t seem to agree, which is yet another reason why your pillow remains firmly wrapped around your head. Unfortunately, it isn’t a very good pillow, and the soundproofing for these rooms isn’t spectacular either.

The pillow, which you have wrapped around the back of your head, is suffocating. Your blankets have all been kicked off the bed and the sheets are slowly sliding to the floor as well. You’re down to your skivvies and you’re still too damn hot, and now the neighbor across the hall has taken to yelling at his television and you snap.

You grab your pants, discarded on the floor. You flail about for your belt for a moment before deciding that you don’t care. You grab a ratty old undershirt and yank it over your head, step into your shoes, grab your key and hat from the bedside table, and head out.

The nearest smokes store is a good five blocks or so away. You take your time walking there, trying to take in the city so late at night. Midnight City might not ever sleep, but you think that from time to time she closes her eyes and dreams of better things.

The streets are quiet, no cars driving to and fro. Most of the shops sit closed, dark windows reflecting the buzzing neon of their open compatriots. The air is tight, tense, at odds with the quiet calm, and when you look up the golden glow of the city is reflected off of low-lying clouds.

You want your coat so that you can turn up your collar and quicken your pace, but it’s too damn hot to bother. Everything feels sticky and heavy, and you think you’ll be glad for the rain to come down and wash the city clean even if it means putting up with the traditional flooding of the lower sections of the city.

The store clerk is half asleep when you step inside the smoke shop, an unlucky fella stuck on the graveyard shift in a part of town that thought walking on the street after midnight meant you would end up never seeing a graveyard proper. The clerk starts a bit when you walk in, but you give him a little smile. You’re good with people, even when you’re hot and irritated.

“Hot tonight,” you say, because that’s what you say when it’s too late at night and you’re in a store with someone who doesn’t want to be there.

“Yeah,” the kid says. “Lookin’ to rain though.” He knows the ritual, right enough, but he adds a little something extra. “Hope it holds out ‘til morning. Promised my sweetie that I’d stop by her place after my shift, and she lives out past the Dead Creek.”

You nod understandingly. The Dead Creek is a nickname for a series of connected streets. They’re all down low and from what you’ve heard their drainage system is terrible. As soon as the city gets any sort of heavy rain the Dead Creek rises back to life like a serial killer’s ghost in a B horror movie. Which might be apt, seeing as how some folks say the Dead Creek got it’s name from the fact that bodies have an interesting tendency to wash up from below when the drainage floods.

You mention this to the clerk and he laughs. “Could be,” he says, handing you your smokes. “Never heard my sweetie mention it, but could be. Never know with this town, eh? I don’t believe all the criminals go dragging bodies out into the desert. Too much effort, right?”

You don’t have the heart to tell the kid how many folks are left only presumed dead, because the desert has a funny habit of eating away at identifying marks and people in general. That would break the ritual, so you laugh in return. “Could be,” you say. “Could be.”

You walk out the door to the tinkling of the bell. You shuffle down the street to a bench and sit down. You open up the box of cigarettes, but you don’t take one out. You just stop and stare at the box for a while, twisting it this way and that, watching the light play over it.

It’s a hot night, a bright night without moon or stars, and you think about going back to your little apartment. The bench underneath you isn’t very comfortable, and thunder rumbles overhead. You shove your box of cigarettes in your pocket and spread your arms out wide, but the rain won’t come. It sits in the clouds, heavy and sullen.

You sigh and lean back. You’re thinking about dead bodies now, Death greet them kindly, about old friends and lovers and the things that the mind will always find at three in the morning. Going home won’t do you much good.

Instead, you get to your feet, the scar on your knee protesting movement and the oncoming rain. You amble along, turning this way and that, until you find a familiar building, first floor gutted by a fire long ago, but the upper levels are still solid. You reach the fire escape in the back and a quick poke behind the garbage bins gives you the hooked pole to pull the ladder down.

You climb up to the third floor where a window can be shoved open with a whine of warped wood. You leave the room and go two doors down. The door that you want is locked, and you give a long-suffering sigh. You fish your cufflinks out of your pocket and glitch them into your lock picks. It doesn’t take long before the door swings open and you step into an apartment that is somehow blessedly cool.

It’s a tiny thing, bedroom and bathroom just barely offset from the kitchen and sitting area. There’s some basic food supplies in the kitchen, a few squishy overstuff chairs in the sitting area. A fan rattles creakily in the corner. You wonder if the table still has bloodstains on it or not, but you shrug and walk to the bedroom without turning on the light.

The bed is comfortable and the room is darker than a cup of joe on a moonless night. You kick off your shoes with a sigh of relief and fall backwards onto the bed, squirming about until you can extract your key and smokes from your pockets to simply drop them on the bed opposite the side where a pool of heat rolls over and slaps an inquiring hand over your face.

“For a man who can’t get into his own damn office without shooting the doorknob off, you seem to be pretty damn good at getting into my place quietly,” Slick complains.

“Talent, sweetheart,” you say, yawning. “You mind?”

“Muh,” Slick says. “Too tired to care. Remind me to kick your ass later.”

“Sure,” you say. The hand on your face retreats, but it’s quickly replaced by the rest of Slick, shoving you about until he can stretch comfortably over you, arm flopping over your face and his own face shoved into your neck.

“Y’know, I cam here because I’m hot,” you say sleepily.

“You’re not hot, I am,” he says, lifting his arm up just enough that he can drop it on your face again.

“No bantering when you just woke up,” you say. “Where’s your arm?”

“Off,” he says. “Too tired to deal with it tonight.”

You nod understandingly, because this, too, is a ritual. “Ain’t gonna help you put it back on in the morning,” you murmur, already drifting off.

“Then you owe me breakfast, asshole,” he says.

“Alright,” you say peacefully. You have barely cooled down at all, and now with Slick on top of you you doubt you ever will, but for some reason that does not bother you as much. You listen to the thunder and the first few drops of rain before you fall asleep.


End file.
